Last week me and my team of seven went on a prayer walk. What is a prayer walk? It’s in the name! You start walking and you pray with every step. We pray for the town, the people, the road, the dogs, the weather, the stores, the employees, the schools, the basketball court, the workers, and anything we lay eyes on, we pray for it! Sometimes it is praying over the town, sometimes it feels like heavy spiritual attack so we circle the town asking for God’s protection against the enemy, and sometimes we just walk and follow the Spirit’s leading and stop people and pray for them.
This particular day we wanted to start the prayer walk off with a prayer (you can never pray too much!). We did a listening prayer “Treasure Hunt” which is taking some time in silence and asking God to give us colors, symbols, signs, pictures, visions, people, etc. fully expecting that when we go into town, we will run into these things and God will use them to guide us where to go and how to pray!
So eight (seven team members and a squad leader) of us gathered on the porch and sat in silence, asking God for a treasure to go hunt for on our prayer walk. Here’s what a few of us got:
Meredith: the color yellow
Jamilyn: blue hat and blue bike
Chandler: a wheel, the numbers 4 and 11
When we shared with each other, we just awkwardly looked at each other and said “Well okay then! Let’s go!” And we set out on our treasure hunt. Here is the interesting thing I noticed right off the bat: Meredith was very keen and very sure about what direction to go the entire time. “I’m feeling we go left” were the first words out of her mouth. And if you guys got to know Mere, you would immediately see her connection with God, her intuition and gift of discernment. When SHE gets something in listening prayer, you best believe it is from the Lord.
And y’all, when we went left, we followed a path covered in yellow, which was the color she got from God. She felt she got the color yellow during her listening prayer and low and behold, every ten feet there was something yellow to assure us we were going in the right direction.
A yellow chip bag.
A yellow house.
A yellow leaf.
A yellow construction sign.
A yellow construction hat.
A yellow dog.
A yellow piece of trash.
A bigger yellow leaf.
A yellow bug.
I had my eyes peeled for all the little treasures we got during listening prayer and I fully expected God to show them all to us. When I kept seeing yellow everywhere we walked I pointed to each of them and was like “YES! YOU’RE an answered prayer! YOU’RE an answered prayer!”
We kept walking and walking and came upon a little store that sells coffee and bread. Literally almost right as we get there, it starts POURING rain. We attempted to walk past it, but the rain became heavier. The people who run the store, who we later found out live there as a family as well, welcomed us in to take cover, offered us coffee, and we looked at each other and accepted this is where God wanted us to end up.
Me and my squad leader Tim attempted to use our broken Spanish and iPhone translation to talk with the father of the house. We found out they have five kids who love to play basketball and ride bikes. A blue bike. Ohhhh shoot. We continued to chat with the family as best we could and then asked if we could pray for them. We circled them in prayer for their home, their business, their relationships, unity, and that they all would come to know Christ. We have since played basketball with their son, built a new basketball hoop with the father of the house, and played with their kids.
What’s crazy is after we left Meredith shared a vision she got during our listening prayer earlier about how she saw our whole team having coffee together in a little house. “That would have been nice to know Mere!” Woah God is cool!
We continued walking and came upon an older man named Manuel who spends most of his days sitting outside the nearby store and shouting “Americanos!” every time we walk by. My teammate Chandler felt the need to pray for him and only after we did so, he pointed out that he was wearing a blue hat.
As we finish praying, talking, and saying goodbye to Manuel, we look up across the street and see a clock with the time 4:11 (the numbers chandler got) and a wheel hanging in a tree. HOLY CRAP. So, we do what any World Racers would do when you see the signs God gave you. You circle the place in prayer!
“I think God is 4 for 4 right now, guys!” I laughed out loud.
We finished our prayer walk by walking to this church right across the street from our ministry site. Tim asked if we wanted to join him to go check it out and I noticed the entire driveway curbs were painted yellow. “YEP!” And what did we find at the end of that yellow brick road? Another man in a blue hat. His name was Phillip and we prayed over his work in the church and that goodness would come from his fingertips and he would come to know the Lord in a mighty way.
Now you may be reading these little stories and find them silly and trivial- maybe you see them as just coincidences and simple things that cannot be equated to God or any higher power. Your thoughts may lead you to assume that these blue hats and weird signs were things we unconsciously saw beforehand, that we stored them away in our brains and now claim that God gave us visions of these signs.
Let me ask you: does God work in the little things? Does God care about the little details of our lives?
I’ve learned a LOT about prayer this month in the Dominican Republic thanks to the book The Circle Maker and one thing that Mark Patterson notices is that if you devote yourself to fervent prayer, you become a watchman. In the Old Testament, watchmen were placed in high towers to be on lookout for the first signs of invaders or traders. They saw what no one else could and this is what happens when we pray. We see things no one else sees. We become God’s watchmen.
Prayer is the difference between seeing with our physical eyes and seeing with our spiritual eyes. It gives us a God’s eye view. It heightens our awareness and gives us a sixth sense that enables us to perceive spiritual realities. Mark explains how when you pray for someone or something, it creates a category in your reticular activating system in your brain. You start noticing anything and everything related to those prayers. Prayer then allows us to see the God ordained opportunities that are around us all the time. When we open our spiritual eyes, we start to see God everywhere we look. We see the image of God in others, His fingerprints in creation, and His glory in all the small little details.
That’s what I believe happened on this prayer walk. We opened our spiritual eyes and walked with God in this small town, seeing Him everywhere that we wouldn’t have seen before if we hadn’t prayed! I saw him in the random signs, the blue hats, and the yellow brick road.
I’ve been inspired this month to hit my knees, pray without ceasing, cry out to the Lord, intercede for others, lay all my desires and wishes at His feet, and pray with full abandon and epic faith. When I do this, I open my eyes and suddenly everything is a yellow brick road. When you pray, God will come at you in ways that will startle and thrill you. You just have to be on the lookout as His watchmen! He has something on the horizon for you! And you won’t be able to see it unless you hit your knees.
Pray. Watch. Yellow Brick Road.
Colossians 4:2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
All my love,
JJ
